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In the final words of these lectures, Steiner tells us that he "did not want to describe the
development of natural science in recent times in a merely documentary fashion." Instead he wanted
to show us "the standpoint of a human being who comprehends this natural-scientific development
and, in a difficult moment of humanity's evolution, knows the right things to say to himself in regard
the progress of mankind." I could not find better words in myself to summarize the theme of this
wonderful book than he did in closing his lecture series. Do you, dear Reader, know the "right things
to say" during this moment of humanity's evolution as regards the progress of humankind? Why
should anyone care? What's this evolution stuff about anyway - didn't that stop when man evolved
from apes? Isn't our science today the best science of all possible sciences? All very good questions
and ones that Steiner addresses in this lecture series.

As for the question about the best of all sciences, Owen Barfield aptly handles that one in his
Introduction when he talks about the Steiner's lectures contained in this book:

[page viii] Their basic argument is that modern science, and the scientism based
on it, so far from being the only possible 'reality-principle' is merely one way
of conceiving the nature of reality; a way moreover that has arisen only recently
and which there is no reason to suppose will last forever.

There was a dichotomy that occurred in the 15th Century between man and nature and our
progress in science to date has depended on that dichotomy in order to proceed. Along the way
humanity found itself discovering mathematical truths that later nested into physical truths about the
world we live in. Barfield tells us that Steiner "found an answer to a question which has puzzled
many thinkers: why should mathematics, a seemingly artificial construction of the human brain, have
been found an effective key to unlock so many of the secrets of nature?" (page xi) What we are to
find is that our fall from "psychic participation in life" was precipitated by the same mathematical
mode of thought that will be instrumental in leading us back to a reunion with that same fullness of
life. Barfield tells us to expect more details about that aspect in Steiner's lectures published in The
Boundaries of Natural Science, which volume is next on my agenda to read and review.

One might expect that Steiner would demean science in these lectures and one would be all
wet if one did. On the contrary he leads us to perceive in our modern scientific perceptions the seeds
of a new spirituality, and the fruits of a freedom that we could not have achieved but for the scientific
path we have trod for almost six centuries.

[page 2] My opinion, based on objective study, is that the scientific path taken
by modern humanity was, if rightly understood, not erroneous but entirely
proper.

Something important was lost to humanity around the year 1453; what was previously
accessible by humankind as shining spirit suddenly returned nothing. This thought occurred to
Cusanus (Nicolas of Cusa) while sailing home from Constantinople looking up at the stars. He later
wrote about this thought in his book, Docta Ignorantia or On Learned Ignorance. Meister Eckhart
also expressed this same thought as, "In all eternity, I must fetch the I from the 'nothingness' of
God." In Eckhart's original German writing, there is a parallel literal meaning: the word ich (I) can
be fetched from the word Nichts (nothingness).

[page 9] If we go back into earlier times, we find that in former ages it was
possible, when the soul turned its gaze inward into itself, to behold the spirit
shining forth within.

Thomas Aquinas or John Scotus Erigena in an earlier time would have looked through their
soul and found their spirit, their immortal I shining within. Now it was no longer possible to do so.
Cusanus was led to nothingness when he sought his spirit, but, being a mathematician, he sought to
use his skills in that art to approach the world of spirit. At the same time a new world was
approaching humanity from the sensory world, and mathematics was to prove a sturdy bridge
between the two worlds: the spiritual world of mathematics and the sensory world of post-15th
Century humanity. We can catch a glimpse of modern science in its embryonic form in Cusanus
when he proclaimed in 1440, in Steiner's words (page 12), "We must conceive the spirit realm as
so far removed from human perception that even mathematics can approach it only with halting
symbols." A hundred years later modern science was born when in 1543 Copernicus was able to say
with eclat:

[page 12] "Conceive of mathematics as so powerful and reliable that it can force
the sense world into mathematical formulas that are scientifically
understandable."

In the second lecture Steiner takes us back to ancient Greece where the world of spirit was
already beginning to dim to human eyes. In the ancient peoples before Greece they felt themselves
pervaded by a spirit that fills the cosmos, they felt themselves to have a messenger from the spiritual
cosmos that they called their individual soul, and they felt themselves to have a physical body that
was an image of their soul. What formerly humanity had experienced in itself as a living spirit that fills
the cosmos, the Greeks could only experience as Logos. Steiner tells us how a lonely disciple of the
time would have expressed this experience:

[page 20] "I listen to the silent universe and fetch this Logos-bearing soul out of
the silence. I love the Logos because the Logos brings tidings of an unknown
god."

The 'unknown god' is the Nichts or nothingness of Meister Eckhart. One result of this
devolution of spirit is that the soul moved from being the messenger of spirit to the bearer or carrier
of an image of the spirit. The body declined from image of spirit to a force. From this, Steiner says,
"The concept of force emerged." Force is one of those things that Newton took for granted that
everyone understood and declared them to be postulates from which he started. The world of spirit
and soul had become more tenuous and the body became more robust. Forces were seen everywhere
in the world and the body. Nature began to be something foreign from man. (Paraphrased from page
21.) Soon the soul came to be experienced as the realm of ideas and the body as spatial corporeality.
Here's Steiner's excellent summary of the devolution in three phases:

[page 24] Once upon a time, in the first phase, the soul experienced the spirit's
archetype within itself. It saw itself as a the messenger of spirit. In the second
phase, the soul inwardly experienced the living image of God in the Logos, it
became the bearer of the Logos. Now, in the third phase, the soul becomes, as
it were, a vessel for ideas and concepts. These may have the certainty of
mathematics, but they are only ideas and concepts.

We have now reached the phase in the 21st Century where the soul comprises the subjective
world of our thought and ideas and the body, the objective world of space, time, mass, motion, and
forces. This devolution of spirit or progression into scientific thinking is placed in historical time by
Steiner thus:

[page 27] We see how the first phase extends to the Eighth Century B. C., to the
ancient sage of Southern Europe whom I have described today. The second
extends from him to Nicholas Cusanus. We find ourselves in the third phase
now. The first is pneumatological, directed to the spirit in its primeval form.
The second is mystical, taking the world in the broadest sense possible. The
third is mathematical. . . The age of mathematizing natural science proceeds
from Cusanus into our time and continues further.

What are we doing today when we use mathematics to express in Cartesian coordinates the
three dimensions of space? We are using a way of thinking that is thought-out but not experienced.
How would one experience the three dimensions of space? Is that even necessary to consider? If we
wish to understand the origins of natural science, it is.

[page 30] Man would have never thought of these [three perpendicular
dimensions of space]if he had not experienced a threefold orientation within
himself. One orientation that man experiences in himself is from front to back.
We need only recall how, from the external modern anatomical and
physiological point of view, the intake and excretion of food, as well as other
processes in the human organism, take place from front to back. . . . I do
something with my right arm and make a corresponding move with my left arm.
Here, the processes are oriented to left and right. Finally, in regard to the last
orientation, man grows into it during earthly life. In the beginning he crawls on
all fours and only gradually stands upright, so that this last orientation flows
within him from above downward and up from below.

My wife experiences the three dimensions in this way, which is dramatically different from
the bare, bleak mathematical space layout of analytic geometry that her husband was trained in
during his college courses studying for his degree in physics. If Steiner's analysis of the experiencing
of spatial coordinates from within oneself is too abstract and unreal, he leads us to consider the
origin of numbers, such as the number two, which comes from the German word zwei [tsvei]. It is
rooted in the processes of entzweien, to "cleave in twain" and zweifeln, "to doubt" or to be two minds
of. Our words "double" and "twin" can be seen to originate from doubt and twain.

[pages 32, 33] It is not mere imitation of an external process when the number
two, zwei, is described by the word Entzweien, which indicates the disuniting,
the splitting, of something formerly a whole. It is in fact something that is
inwardly experienced and only then made into a scheme.

If we wish to discover this former way of experiencing reality inward, we have only to go
back to the writings of Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza. No doubt some of you have already read
their writings and are of the opinion that no such description exists in their writings. If so, perhaps you were looking to find the new (your way of thinking) in the old when you read them. Steiner leads us rather to understand how to find in the old (their way of thinking) the beginnings of what we call the new.

[page 33] Immerse yourself in these thinkers, not superficially as is the practice
today when one always wants to discover in the thinkers of old the modern
concepts that have been drilled into our heads, but unselfishly, putting yourself
mentally in their place. You will find that even Spinoza still retained something
of a mystical attitude toward the mathematical method.

Steiner says that running in a triangle gives one a completely different experience in the
blood from running in a square. During the pre-Renaissance time when "soul still felt movement as
a mathematical experience and blood as a mystical experience" no one could have conceived of the
orbits of the planets traversing a system of abstract coordinates. In the time of Harvey, a
contemporary of Francis Bacon, the circulation of the blood was beginning to be understood as
physical circulation with the heart in the center, just as the planets were soon to be understood as a physical
circulation with the Sun in the center. The very idea of the Renaissance as an abstract label applied
to a confluence of new ideas, of new ways of interpreting what had formerly been a direct inner
experience, was made possible by humanity developing the ability to divorce concepts from a direct
experience of the blood. The idea of the Renaissance just being a period of history just sitting back
in time is like the Copernican coordinates divorced from the heart experience just sitting out in
space. R. G. Collingwood said that all history is the history of thought. One can see that, not only was natural science affected by this dramatic change in 1453 AD, but even the way we understand history became changed in the process.

Geometrical and arithmetic forms were once experienced directly in the blood as intense
inner experiences. But an amazing thing happened during the Renaissance when abstract coordinates
replaced humanity's concept of direct inner experiences.

[page 43] This conception could change into a different one only when men lost
their awareness that everything quantitative - including mathematics - is
originally experienced by man in direct connection with the universe.

When a mathematician or physicist today has an insight and expresses it in a mathematical
formula, they have had a supersensible experience which they communicate to others in a communal
language (mathematics). They wonder in amazement when later the real world is found to line-up
with their mathematically described world! The reason for amazement can be described simply: the
supersensible world is always aligned with the material world or what they call the real world. Steiner
helps us, at last, to unravel the knots of this puzzle.

[page 44] The most that can be said of such an imposition of mathematics on
natural phenomena is that what has first been mathematically thought out is
then found to fit the phenomena of nature. But why this is so can no longer be
discovered within this particular world perception.

Steiner describes how Giordano Bruno experienced the Copernican world conception in the
old way, within his own being and points to Isaac Newton as the first to truly describe the new
conception of the world based on abstract mathematics. As such Steiner takes his place alongside
Dr. Andrew J. Galambos in paying respect to Newton for being the originator of modern science.

[pages 47, 48] Newton is pretty much the first to approach the phenomena of
nature with abstract mathematical thinking. Hence, as a kind of successor to
Copernicus, Newton becomes the real founder of modern scientific thinking.

[page 50] In fact, in Newton's physics we meet for the first time ideas of nature
that have been completely divorced from man. . . . By Newton's time
mathematics has become abstracted. Man has forgotten that originally he
received mathematics as an inspiration from God.

Later Newton was to feel uncomfortable with his tearing man completely away from the
spirit, and in his book Optics talked about space as the "sensorium of God." Bishop Berkeley in a
similar manner rejected the ideas of infinitesimals, regarding them as a loss of reality, since the only
thing that existed for him was what could be experienced. The mathematical processes of
differentiating and integrating, in Steiner's view, are similar to what one might do if one were to
chop a living human body into small pieces (differentiate) and then place the pieces back together
as if it were a jigsaw puzzle (integrate).

[pages 54,55] To differentiate is to kill; to integrate is to piece the dead together
again in some kind of framework, to fit the differentials together again into a
whole. But they do not thereby become alive again, after having been
annihilated. One ends up with dead spectres, not with anything living.

One might think that Steiner had little respect for science, but that would be wrong. He had
a great respect for and understanding of the evolution of consciousness. He knew that people "like
to regard as great thinkers those men who have said something or that they approve. But if the great
men also said something they do not approve, they feel very superior and think: Unfortunately, on
this point he wasn't as enlightened as I am." (pages 56,57) Having grown up in a culture completely
divorced from the spirit since the last vestiges of understanding spirit disappeared with Bruno,
Berkeley, and Newton, we exude a hubris about our world, up until now. It does not serve us well. Unless we let
go of our myopic attitude of superiority, we will not be able to find collectively the spirit in nature,
that same spirit that each of us will find individually upon our death. What is the value of science
as we know today, according to Steiner?

[page 57] Things that can only be learned from a corpse cannot be learned by
a person who is unwilling to examine the corpse. Therefore certain mysteries of
the world can be comprehended only if the modern scientific way of thinking is
taken seriously. . . . The scientific world view must be taken seriously, and for
this reason I was never an opponent of it; on the contrary, I regarded it as
something that of necessity belongs to our time. . . . It was the misinterpretation
of such scientific discoveries that I opposed.

One example of misinterpretation that Steiner describes in detail is the atomism of living
beings or the cell theory of Schleiden and Schwann in the early 19th Century. This atomism or
dividing things up into cells is equivalent to killing the very thing we're trying to understand,
namely, life. "The truth of the matter is that any real idea of organisms has been lost to the atomistic
approach." (page 70)

[page 81] Therefore, in spite of its great achievements we can say that science
owes its greatness to the fact that it has completely missed the essential nature
of man.

In case, you dear Reader, want evidence that we are still "missing the essential nature of
man" take a look at this quote from a well-known scientist of our day, Richard Dawkins: "If you
want to understand life, don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information
technology."

To help us understand our modern sciences of physics and chemistry, Steiner takes us back
for physics to our earlier understanding of motion in its internal human experience, for chemistry
to our internal human experience of "throbbing gels and oozes" to use Dawkins' derisive terms. The
Table below appears on page 93 and I've added for completeness the sciences of psychology and
pneumatology. The latter is the now defunct science of the spirit. Defunct I define operationally as:
cannot be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica or many dictionaries. It means the science of the
spirit, which Steiner says has been reduced to almost nothing, a jot in the footnotes of science today,
"the mere dot of the ego." (page 107) Physics is the most abstract science — it is the most separated from human
existence, and as a result, it consists of laws that are exact and universally applicable. Chemistry on
the other hand can never be completely separated from the gels and oozes of human life, and as such will
never be able to reach the status of physics because it is not "possible to take as much of the etheric
body into the external world as was accomplished in the physical body."

One way to interpret the above Table to take it as a key to understanding how knowledge of
the science in the fourth column amounts to an inner experience of the body listed in the third
column. Physics is the inner experience of our physical body abstracted mathematically into laws.
Chemistry is the inner experience of our etheric body abstracted to the degree possible into forms
approximating laws. Psychology, the inner experience of our Astral body of thoughts and feelings.
And Pneumatology, that almost non-existent science, the inner experience of our immortal spirit in
our "I" or Ego organization. Here's how Steiner describes the components of the Table.

[page 107] All this took the place of what had been experienced as a unity, when
men of old said: We have four elements, earth, water, air, and fire. Earth we
experience in ourselves when we experience the physical body. Water we
experience in ourselves when we experience the etheric body as the agent that
moves, mixes, and separates the fluids. Air is experienced when the astral body
is experienced in thinking, feeling, and willing, because these three are
experienced as surging with the inner breathing process. - Finally, warmth (or
fire, as it was then called) was experienced in the sensation of the ego.

The Four Sciences Table

Warmth

Blood

Ego Organization

Pneumatology

Air

Pneuma

Astral Body

Psychology

Water

Phlegm

Etheric Body

Chemistry

Earth

Black Gall

Physical Body

Physics

Again we find that our science of today is rife with misinterpretation of the human body. We
find wonderful photos of the organs of the body in full color, layered over one another so that one
can see how the organs are aligned in space from front to back. What's missing, however, is the
essential nature of the etheric body: the throbbing gels and flowing oozes.

[page 110] Laymen see the pictures and have the impression that this is all they
need to understand the body. But this is misleading. It is only one tenth of man.
The remainder ought to be described by drawing a continuous stream of fluids
interacting in the most manifold ways in the stomach, liver, and so forth. Quite
erroneous conceptions arise as to how man's organism actually functions,
because only the sharply outlined organs are observed.

So far, one might argue, Steiner has not said much that is good about modern science,
nothing that would indicate why he even respects it. Anyone who has read Steiner's classical book
The Philosophy of Freedom (1898) knows that freedom is something that Steiner knows something
about. Keep that in mind as you read his words about the impact that modern science has had on
freedom.

[page 114] The development towards freedom, for example, would never have
occurred had the ancient experience of physics, chemistry, psychology, and
pneumatology survived. Man had to lose himself as an elemental being in order
to find himself as a free being. He could only do this by withdrawing from
himself for a while and paying no attention to himself any longer. . . . During
this interim, when man took the time to develop something like the feeling of
freedom, he worked out the concepts of science; these concepts that are, in a
manner of speaking, so robust that they can grasp nature. Unfortunately,
however, they are too coarse for the being of man.

Science brought us to a feeling for freedom, but the very modes of thought that led us to
grasp the natural world in a robust manner were too coarse to allow us to understand the human
being, up until now. To truly understand science, we must look to the parallel evolution of our
consciousness and the freedom that accompanied it.

What's this all about? some of you may be asking. Where do we go from here with all these
insights into how science evolved to where it is by distancing itself from a direct experience of the
human being as much as possible?

[page 126] And infinitely much needs to be set right, particularly in the domain
of science. Natural science has grown tall; it is like a nice teenager, who at the
moment is going through his years of unpolished adolescence, and whose
guidance must be continued so that he will become mature.

This will only come about if the "anthroposophical way of thinking is applied to science."
What is needed is for people who are schooled in the natural sciences to learn to add anthroposophical ways of understanding the world to their school-taught knowledge of chemistry and physics. Just as ordinary perception is
enough to enable anyone to discern the difference between a corpse and a living human being, so
also ordinary perception is enough to allow one to "analyze properly the true facts of today's physics
and chemistry." (page 127)

When we cooperate to achieve this goal, we will return to our earlier understandings of the
world, but in a new way, infused with the insights of modern science and with the new-found
consciousness of freedom that we have evolved in the only way possible: by straying from our inner
experiences to develop a robust understanding of the world in which we live.

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